Insurrection of Oneself
I’ve recently moved away from a mental clinic to a proper apartment. While I have been in this new environment I have been contemplating the nature of ownness. If I would follow Max Stirner’s words like gospel, which you probably shouldn’t (see my last piece), I should be happier now, as I increased at least my material ownness: from institutionalised to living semi-independently. Yet, something didn’t sit right with me, I didn’t feel more “free” or “my own” because I did not also possess the mental means to maintain this liberation.
So, how do I attain this liberation, I thought. How could I truly liberate myself from the shackles of doubt and despair? Simply achieving the mental means wasn’t enough. I needed to maintain them or else risk them withering away again, or risk falling back into this depressing nature.
I came to the answer when I was quickly examining my previous work. I was rather taken back at my final words in that article: “you are you and I am me: nothing more, nothing less.” This last sentence, probably written by past-me as an afterthought, got me thinking: I am me, that’s all I am. Nothing may be destined for me but I am still a human with hopes and dreams. Sure the overlords in our “democracy of the bourgeoisie” prefer us depressed and thus docile, throwing us to rot in jail or worse if we try to make actual change in the system outside of the impossible task of reform. But is not the best way to then stick it to our overlords to be boldly happy with our life: to stand there and tell them to “fuck off” unafraid of your wellbeing, as you are all you need to thrive?
Okay, so now, how do we actually formulate this thought, this theory of mine, into praxis? Simple: set your own goals, free of societal expectations. As you may have noticed I go around under the title of Princess of Pink. This is partly to stick it to the monarchist lust for bloodlines, partly because it stands as a personal symbol against my dysphoria. I’ve always admired Princess Peach from the Super Mario Bros. series as a “being” of pure unadulterated femininity. Now I, in pursuit of what makes me “me” so that I can truly let my hopes and dreams prosper, realised that I can myself embrace this Princess Peach-like femininity and “princessness” in pursuit as the ultimate goal of self-liberation: to make me the me of my hopes and dreams.
Opponents of my theory of “ideal self” might point towards what Stirner says in Page 167 of the Unique and Its Property:
But for this reason that assumption is no assumption at all; because since I am the unique, I know nothing of the duality of an assuming and an assumed I (an “incomplete” and a “complete” I or human being); but that I consume myself means only that I am. I do not assume myself because in each moment I am really setting up or creating myself for the first time, and am only I, not by being assumed, but by being set up, and again set up only in the moment when I set myself up ; i.e., I am creator and creature in one.
To that I say that "ideal self" might have been the wrong term to use, as Stirner notes on the duality of the perfect/imperfect self, however I do not think that the improvement of oneself is fundamentally "unegoist" (whatever that means), as someone, I for instance, might find pleasure out of molding my own creative nothing into a more euphoric manner (in the loosest sense of the term euphoric). I am still the same person (I am me), but like Stirner points out here I am also both the creator and creature in one: I create the creature that is me. Thus if an aspect of the creature me goes against the will of the creator that is also me, it's in my interest to change that aspect, no?
This series of thoughts, admittedly probably resembles Nietzsche more than Stirner, got me to truly embrace my creative nothingness. For the ability to shape oneself into what one truly desires is the most liberating of thoughts. This “insurrection of oneself” is one that gives immense mental power, an essential step to truly being your own.